I was a computer programmer from about 1970 to 75 when I had to stop work when my daughter was born. I really enjoyed if. I was an assembler programmer but also occasionally used Cobol and Fortran. The company I worked for had 2 huge machines that each nearly took up a whole floor of the building that was built as a bridge of the road. They were a whopping 56k (36bit words so bigger than a 56k IBM)! Not that long after I left I bought a ZX81 in smiths and carried it home in my shopping bag, underneath the bridge with the two big computers and laughed to myself! I agree with everything you've said.
I certainly remember that ZX81. The clear potential of computers was but one element of the the unbridled optimism of those days. And yes, by then it had been 14 years since the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey with it's the promise of routine interplanetary travel in our lifetime. The ZX81 and the Spectrum were proof that it was all coming true!
Thanks for this trip down memory lane, Chris. I struggled through a week of learning ALGOL in 1970 as part of my science degree, but unlike you the feedback loop defeated me and I never got the program to run. The worst bit was dropping the punched card stack so never sure I got it back in the right order! But it didn’t put me off a career in software development, which included working on migrating data from one health system to the ‘shiny’ new ones as part of the NHSIT programme. One of my first jobs was with a DEC computer (PDP8 with a whole 8k memory!) which had loads of toggle switches and flashing lights on the front, but which had to be booted with a 12 inch length of punched paper tape. Luckily I never did have to discover whether there was a backup piece of tape.....
I was a computer programmer from about 1970 to 75 when I had to stop work when my daughter was born. I really enjoyed if. I was an assembler programmer but also occasionally used Cobol and Fortran. The company I worked for had 2 huge machines that each nearly took up a whole floor of the building that was built as a bridge of the road. They were a whopping 56k (36bit words so bigger than a 56k IBM)! Not that long after I left I bought a ZX81 in smiths and carried it home in my shopping bag, underneath the bridge with the two big computers and laughed to myself! I agree with everything you've said.
I certainly remember that ZX81. The clear potential of computers was but one element of the the unbridled optimism of those days. And yes, by then it had been 14 years since the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey with it's the promise of routine interplanetary travel in our lifetime. The ZX81 and the Spectrum were proof that it was all coming true!
(Btw, Hal is the tag on my ChatGPT bookmark)
Atb,
Wolfy.
Thanks for this trip down memory lane, Chris. I struggled through a week of learning ALGOL in 1970 as part of my science degree, but unlike you the feedback loop defeated me and I never got the program to run. The worst bit was dropping the punched card stack so never sure I got it back in the right order! But it didn’t put me off a career in software development, which included working on migrating data from one health system to the ‘shiny’ new ones as part of the NHSIT programme. One of my first jobs was with a DEC computer (PDP8 with a whole 8k memory!) which had loads of toggle switches and flashing lights on the front, but which had to be booted with a 12 inch length of punched paper tape. Luckily I never did have to discover whether there was a backup piece of tape.....